by ·Comments Off on Legend of the Mountain (1979, King Hu)

So titled because I Married a Witch was already taken. Scholar-dropout-turned-copyist Shih Chun takes a gig to copy some holy sutras, heads to a quiet place in the country where he can focus, and that plan sure does backfire. First he gets wasted at the annoying neighbor’s house while her daughter Melody plays trance-drums, then he wakes up and Melody claims they slept together, so they get married. Now he has a new wife, an annoying mother-in-law and a contradictory host, and they’re all being circled by the host’s deranged servant Old Chang who looks suspiciously like a vampire, plus a disappearing hot flautist called Cloud, and a Lama.

Movie is good for its entire 3+ hour runtime – King sure knows how to frame a shot and set up a scene. And it gets slowly weirder and more unsettling, until after two whole hours of gradual build, we’re rewarded with a dance-fight wuxia scene. This is post-Star Wars but instead of using light beams to portray the magic, he sticks with flashbangs, colored smoke, and surreal reverse-film effects. It’s belatedly explained that Melody and Cloud are rival magicians, and even more belatedly demonstrated that everybody here except Shih is a ghost.

All the ghosts get backstories via drum-induced flashback (there is a lot of aggressive spiritual hand-drumming in this). Cloud, the Lama, the host, and even Old Chang appear to be our guy’s savior and/or evil conspirators at different points. Melody is banished to hell but easily escapes for a final showdown, and when Shih (whose primary ability until now has been to run away) gets fed up of all these ghosts, he throws his prayer beads into the air and everyone burns up. All these actors are from the same year’s Raining in the Mountain except the great Sylvia Chang as Cloud, who went on to Shanghai Blues and Office.

The most suspenseful scene to me, hoping drunken Shih wouldn’t break this teapot:

I recently discovered The Chinese Cinema site, where Sean writes: “As a wuxia mystery film, it feels more in the spirit of Tsui Hark’s debut The Butterfly Murders (also from 1979),” which sounds promising, so I’m watching that next.

Shih is terrific as the scholar, dogged yet constantly befuddled, but ultimately competent (you do feel for him when he finally discovers how much he’s been manipulated and the film’s final shots wouldn’t work if we didn’t know this man so well as he stands alone against a raging river). It’s a very different character than his ultra-confident swordsman in Dragon Gate Inn or even his not-as-clever-as-he-thinks scholar in A Touch of Zen.

This is what happens when ghosts mess with prayer beads:

by ·Comments Off on The Butterfly Murders (1979, Tsui Hark)

Not sure it’s worth recounting the whole Scooby Doo story of Hark’s debut feature – there’s so much of it. Flipside of the King Hu movie, pulling off as much plot and action and as many cool compositions in under half the runtime. Sean and Jake are saying the same thing, and they’re both saying it better than I could’ve.

The initial team:

Multiple clans unite to solve the killer butterflies mystery, including Green Shadow (who’d return in We’re Going to Eat You!). They arrive at a castle, where the Lord is the dad from A Brighter Summer Day and the Lady was in the same year’s Magnificent Butcher. Soon, the Three Thunders arrive – including Magic Fire, who would be in a few Johnnie To films and The Bride With White Hair. Now Scholar Fong (villain of the Chinese Ghost Story series) knows the mysterious leather mask-man who controls the butterflies is the castle lord and gets the heck out of there, also knowing everyone is gonna kill each other.

Mouseover to unmask the mysterious armored man:
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Ladies and gentlemen… The Magic Fire Crow:

by ·Comments Off on The Iron Rose (1973, Jean Rollin)

Couple meets at a wedding and chase each other around giggling, then have a nice time nude in a crypt. When they return to the surface, the cemetery is closed and deserted and their attempts to leave end up in loops, until he gets shitty, starts slapping her around and trashing graves. They make up, and get busy on a pile of bones. I still don’t love these vibes-only Rollin movies but don’t mind rollin’ with one every couple of years. The actress would go on to almost produce a Tara Reid movie, while he would star in City of Pirates and Tale of Springtime.

by ·Comments Off on Investigation of a Citizen Above Suspicion (1970, Elio Petri)

Our guy slashes his girl’s throat during sex Gone Girl-style, but she’s too respectable to bleed more than an ounce or so. The flipside to Police Python, which also starts with a police chief killing his girl, this chief explains his moral power-play games to himself on tape, then manipulates the murder investigation away from himself, then toward himself, with no apparent difference in results. “We must know everything, control everything,” he rants, “Repression is our vaccine,” he exclaims. Movie gets more slippery and subjective, and is quite watchable despite our protagonist, but most importantly it’s got one of Morricone’s glorious soundtracks, a nice repeating theme full of boioioing noises.

This is also how I solve crimes:

by ·Comments Off on Police Python 357 (1976, Alain Corneau)

A guy and his boss are seeing the same girl, then the boss murders the girl, but all evidence points at the guy. Yes, it’s a Big Clock remake, minus the clock, sleazier, and with the guys turned from reporters into cops.

When you are the lead suspect in your own investigation:

The killer cop boss is in all the cop/killer movies where guys wear cool hats (Le Samourai, Le Cercle Rouge) and was Heurtebise in Orpheus. Stefania from The Conformist rejects his gifts, so he beats her to death with a stone, then immediately confesses to his bedridden wife Simone Signoret. Post-Tout Va Bien Yves Montand investigates by tearing up the girl’s apartment, finding hidden mementos everywhere, then he goes around attacking potential witnesses, getting himself tailed by a glasses-wearing cop (of Malpertius, which I coincidentally bought on blu-ray on the same day as this).

Drunken Yves liberates some pigs:

Things get dark for Yves – he burns his face with acid after killing the boss and mercy-killing the boss’s wife (witnessed by Glasses Cop), then with nothing to lose he “becomes a weapon” and supercops some bad guys in the big action finale. I’m making it all sound generic, but it’s an improvement on The Big Clock and I’m hoping to check out Corneau’s Serie Noire next.

Mouseover to set fire to your memories:
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by ·Comments Off on The Hourglass Sanatorium (1973, Wojciech Has)

After Saragossa Manuscript, another Wojciech Has movie full of madness, beautifully filmed, and based on an eccentric novel, which didn’t really work for me. Jan Nowicki (Barrier) goes to a time-warping hospital to find his not-dead-yet dad, then wanders through fantastical episodes, full of delirious clutter (and copious cobwebs) in the tradition of Szulkin and Hard to be a God.

Opens with our guy getting directions from a blind train conductor, ends with him having become the conductor – I guess it all makes sense if you’d read the Bruno Schulz novel, or else making sense isn’t the point. I wasn’t expecting a musical number, but he visits the Jewish neighborhood and they can’t help themselves.

Smart guys like Jake and Yui and PD got it, I’m more on Paul‘s side.

Helmeted protag with his dead father and carnival birdheads:

by ·Comments Off on Reminiscences of a Journey to Lithuania (1972, Jonas Mekas)

“Hey, I escaped the ropes of time once more.” Between shorter beginning and end chapters, the hourlong middle is a diary of a week spent with family in Lithuania, in a hundred numbered chapters. Handheld scenes, sometimes nicely composed and sometimes quick and jittery, with in-camera editing. See: Sicinski

Jonas and mother:

Episode 61: the duck was captured but not harmed:

by ·Comments Off on The Scenic Route (1978, Mark Rappaport)

Dry Detached Experimental Arthouse Cinema but with a bit of dramatic heat, via heightened music, color, poses.

Estelle narrates from her notebooks. “I pretended I was malleable… I know it’ll happen again.” Her troublesome sister comes to stay, and they juggle two men between them – mostly Mustache Paul but also Estelle’s ex Jack, counting down until at least one of these men gets murdered.

They seem to have no life or interests besides men and each other. They all disco dance in the living room, because it is 1978. Eventually Paul tries to sister-swap, creeping into Estelle’s bed, not having listened to the backstory to realize this is how you get stabbed.

Mostly the movie isn’t a straight narrative but a Ruizian carousel of framing games. The DP has range, shot this and Girlfriends, Q: The Winged Serpent, The Dead, and Freddy vs. Jason. Mustache Paul is better known as a writer of Meet Joe Black.

by ·Comments Off on Woodstock (1970, Michael Wadleigh)

Long doc, full of split-screens to fit as much rock action into the widescreen frame as possible, and still manages to miss major events (Creedence) in favor of a portrait of the guy who cleans the toilets (a highlight) and reporters hounding the fest organizer over whether the fest is losing money. With 30+ hours of music recorded that weekend plus all the interviews and split-screens, this event would be a prime candidate for the Eno treatment.